In 1921, they bought a second property in London, in the hope that by being in the city, she could achieve greater literary recognition. This, however, did not happen, although she won the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse for Precious Bane in 1926. By 1927, she was suffering increasingly bad health, her marriage was failing, and she returned to Spring Cottage alone. She died at St Leonards-on-Sea, aged 46. She was buried in Shrewsbury, at the General Cemetery in Longden Road. [11] Legacy [ edit ] A long quote which gives the idea of what kind of English was it that I was trying to describe earlier (direct quotes, for me, are like movie trailers or food samplings: instead of draining one's barrel of adjectives attempting to describe, better just present a choice morsel of the thing!). There's a love story here, and tragedy, and family. When she was a young girl the narrator expressed wonderment that her mother kept on telling her father, in moments of anguish--"Could I help it if the hare crossed my path? Could I help it?" I, too, found this puzzling not knowing what it meant until later it dawned on me: it has something to do with superstition, of which there were plenty during the old times, and what the girl-narrator is (though she be unconscious of it). Superstitions which, themselves, bring informative delight. Each of the characters is drawn with skill and dexterity. They sing. They are real. However, it is Prue, so thoughtful and wise, so wondering and open, that makes this book such a joy to read.

Precious Bane | Victorian England, Rural Life, Nature

Her theology has a Calvinistic edge. If those around her believe in curses, she believes in a God who makes us his “mommets”, predestined to play out assigned parts. A profound experience of sweetness is avowedly “not religious, like the goodness of a text heard at a preaching”, but bound up in the natural world, part and parcel of “such things as bird-song and daffodowndillies rustling”. Yet later, literate, she connects this visitation with the Song of Solomon and the banner of love. I give easement and rest now to thee, dear man, that ye walk not over the fields nor down the by-ways. And for thy peace I pawn my own soul.' While at Pontesbury in 1914 to 1916, she and Henry did their bit for the war effort by growing vegetables in their garden and selling them at Shrewsbury market." A compelling story of passion, with an enduring air of enchantment throughout, Precious Bane is a novel that haunts us with its beauty and its timeless truths about our deepest hopes. Set in Shropshire in the 1800s, it is alive with the many moods of Nature, benevolent and violent and the many moods -- equally benevolent and violent -- of the people making lives there. The Old Shropshire dialect was very difficult for me, I must admit. I stumbled through for a while, but eventually the bumpy ride smoothed out as I adjusted to it, and in the end I found the dialect gave a richness and authenticity to the text.

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Born: Mary Gladys Meredith at Leighton Lodge, Leighton, on March 25, 1881. Known as Gladys to her family. Mary was the eldest of six children and her earliest writing consisted of plays and stories to amuse her brothers and sisters. Precious Bane is a historical romance by Mary Webb, first published in 1924. It won the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse Prize in 1926. Mary's first published work had been a poem which appeared in the Shrewsbury Chronicle of October 18, 1907, about the Shrewsbury train disaster three days earlier. Her brother Kenneth Meredith had taken it in to the paper without her knowledge and it was published anonymously. This poem about the Shrewsbury railway disaster was published anonymously in the Shrewsbury Chronicle in 1907 – the future novelist's first published work.

Precious Bane | Victorian England, Rural Life, Nature Precious Bane | Victorian England, Rural Life, Nature

Autobiographical elements can be seen in the heroine of Precious Bane, Prue Sarn, who is afflicted with a hare-lip and is treated as a social pariah." Missis Beguildy - Beguildy's wife who fears her husband and yet does not hesitate to collude with Gideon and Jancis in their plans to be together. She is crafty in her methods to get her husband out of the house for days at a time, and she is sharp in her observations of the people in the community. I think, times, that in our mortal language there are no words for the things that are of most account." She died at St Leonards on Sea on 8th October 1927 at the age of forty six. She is buried at Shrewsbury cemetery and The Mary Webb Society maintains her grave and has a rota for placing fresh flowers each month.

I discovered Precious Bane years after Cold Comfort Farm, and writing this feels like a sort of penance, having chosen a reading from the latter at my wedding. I think it is possible to love both. Like Baldwin, I was transported by Webb’s novel, a love story about a young woman with a “hare-shotten lip” who learns to tell the time by watching the reflections in Sarn Mere, a lake so old that she wonders whether it belongs to someone’s dream. “Maybe you never slept in a cot of rushes,” she observes. “But all of us did at Sarn.” Her mother, Sarah Alice Scott was from an Edinburgh family reputedly connected with Sir Walter Scott. A strict churchman might find Prue much at fault (although, in Sarn, even the parson has a book of “curious ancient prayers”). She’s as likely to look in a wizard’s book for a solution as the Bible; she is well-versed in superstitious folk-lore, and lax in her churchgoing. Yet she is also full of scripture, the created world frequently evoking, for her, biblical scenes. The lilies on the mere are “like the raiment of those men who stood with Christ upon the mountain top”, floating as if Jesus, “walking upon the water, had laid them down with His cool hands”. How sad for Mary that this much desired acclaim was never received in her lifetime. She is buried in the old part of Shrewsbury cemetery, Longden Road, where her grave is maintained by the Mary Webb Society." The only cause for all the misfortune that they could see was the curse of God … They’d reasoned it out slow, as we do in the country, but once they came to the end of the reasoning they were fixed, and it would take a deal to turn them.”